Rob Crilly

Rob Crilly is Pakistan correspondent of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. Before that he spent five years writing about Africa for The Times, The Irish Times, The Daily Mail, The Scotsman and The Christian Science Monitor from his base in Nairobi.

Carrie is back. And it turns out that when she was given a job in Istanbul at the end of last season what the producers of Homeland really meant was Kabul, which is where season 4 picked up last night when the first two episodes were broadcast in the US. Having lived in South Asia for the past four and a half years it would be easy to pick out the errors the show makes in depicting that part of the world…. so I have.

From the first scene – which shows Carrie, the Kabul CIA station chief no less, getting out of her car to stroll the atmospherically lit streets – the show is full of howlers. No CIA agent would walk Kabul's streets. And certainly not at night…. Read More

Dealing with terrorist propaganda is never easy for journalists. Any telling of the story has to include both sides. But only up to a point. Bold, grandiose claims of victory should be met with the usual reasonable scepticism. No journalist wants to end up acting as a PR assistant to thugs and killers.

The release last month of the Isil video showing the murder of James Foley prompted a degree of soul searching among hacks. Some said even the act of viewing it was to give the thugs a victory, generating the horror and revulsion they sought to propagate – let alone actually broadcasting the video itself. Twitter began deactivating accounts of those who spread particularly gruesome images (prompting a debate about internet freedom).

This time around some of the lessons have been learned. The video and its images seem… Read More

It was two hundred years ago yesterday that British soldiers snuck into the White House. They found the place deserted, with a lavish banquet laid out. Once they had finished scoffing down the food, they piled up furniture, set fire to the place and left.

It is one of the few remembered episodes of a largely forgotten war. At the time Britain was far more worried about Napoleon and the French (as usual).

Two centuries on, the US and UK have rather patched things up. Our soldiers fight side by side and the White House is still standing.

Although it seems Americans remain sensitive.

For when the British embassy in Washington tweeted a perfectly innocuous photograph of a commemorative cake – a mini White House surrounded by sparklers – accompanied by the line: "Commemorating the 200th anniversary of burning the White House…. Read More

Why are White House officials and the Pentagon briefing on a failed raid to save James Foley, the journalist murdered by his fundamentalist captors in Syria?

One downside is obvious. It is an admission of failure. The Delta Force commandos, having been dropped on the ground, fought their way to the place where they believed Mr Foley and other captives were held. They found no one. Their intelligence was off the mark.

By revealing the operation they have now confirmed the suspicions of Isil: That their gunmen were indeed attacked by American special forces earlier this summer. It gives the terrorists an insight into American tactics and weaponry.

There is good reason why most special forces – including our SAS – keep operations secret.

Now, the US has tipped of Isil that its special forces are already conducting operations in Syria. The element of surprise is diluted, if not lost… Read More

It seemed the obvious idea to a businessman and his MBA wife. Open a business together, one close to home, where they could spend time working in each other’s company.

They found it. A burger bar that was struggling to stay afloat but one with potential to grow fast.

They took ownership on 12 days ago. Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot dead by a police officer the very next day just round the corner from The Ferguson Burger Bar and More. Not an auspicious opening.

“I knew him from a baby. He was big even then,” said Kizzie Davis. “His mother came here on the third day. She knew we were opening and wanted to show her support but she didn’t eat very much.”

It is the only time the grin fades from the face of Mrs Davis, as she juggles telephones and change, calling orders to the busy… Read More

Police fire gas canisters at a crowd of protestors who disobeyed the midnight curfew. (Photo: EPA)

I spent a chunk of Sunday with demonstrators in Missouri. No, not the angry crowds that have gathered nightly in Ferguson demanding justice for Michael Brown, the unarmed black man shot dead by a police officer.

This crowd was quieter. No-one wanted to give their name. And it was overwhelmingly white. In fact there was only one black person among the crowd of about 150.

This was a demonstration in support of Darren Wilson, the white officer who fired the fatal shot that ignited a racial firestorm a little over a week ago.

I was in Benghazi on the morning when Gadaffi troops stormed its streets in 2011. Shells bracketed through the city, almost street by street . The place was in fear, aware that as the cradle of the revolution its residents would not be spared. Mosques boomed "Allahu Akhbar" from their minarets – part warning, part farewell.

All day I stood with civilians staring at the sky, wondering when Nato planes would arrive to save the city.

They arrived a day later, pulverising Gaddafi's war machine as it slept just outside Benghazi.

These past weeks have brought a string of questions about whether the intervention in Libya was the right thing to do. The country is in chaos. British diplomats have followed their American and French counterparts home. Was it worth it, cry the non-interventionists. Aren't we… Read More

The shooting yesterday of Major General Harold Greene at the Afghan National Defence University, killed by an unnamed local soldier, marks a very black day for Nato-led troops in the country. He was not just the most senior American officer killed in Afghanistan's 13 years of war, but as my colleague Ben Farmer writes, he was the highest ranking US military officer killed overseas since the Vietnam War.

The episode will be seized on by the naysayers, who believe our efforts amount to nothing more than folly and that the Taliban merely has to wait until American combat forces leave at the end of the year to come swarming out of their caves to declare victory.

They are wrong.

The episode at the vast campus – which also houses the British-backed officer training academy nicknamed Sandhurst in… Read More

Thrilled to hear that Carrie is headed to Pakistan for the next season of Homeland, at least according to the trailer. Excited to find out whether her experiences here tally with mine – broadly of hospitality, friendship and warmth. I imagine the opening going something like this:

When William Hague stepped down as Foreign Secretary this week, many newspapers focused on the Angelina Jolie factor, complete with dozens of pictures. That is to say, commentators wondered whether Mr Hague's legacy might be his effort to reorientate the Foreign and Commonwealth Office towards advocacy campaigns, ending HM Government's obsession with punching above its weight on the world stage, in favour of exercising "soft power".

Yet one of his longer lasting contributions may be the utter destruction of the greatest instrument of soft power the world has ever seen: the BBC World Service, an institution beaming British values around the world to 190m listeners.

It was on his watch that the Foreign Office ended its funding of the World Service. Since April, its budget is drawn only from the licence fee, forcing it to… Read More